Monthly Archives: April 2011

So now that you all know vaguely of who I am, its time to get to business. If you are a teenager who is serious about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, you will fully understand what I am about to tell you; if you are a parent, you should really try to.

First off I am going to start with the big one – having the time to train. I have heard from so many individuals that, “oh I wish I was your age so I could train whenever I wanted”. The reason many of you can’t train is because Jiu Jitsu is not a top priority; which is fine, but I don’t want to hear about how you can never train, that it’s always so easy for me to train, if you were my age it would be so easy, etc. It is a common misconception that every teen can train whenever they want and however long they want. The truth is , contrary to popular belief, we have some responsibilities too like school, jobs, demands of family, friends and in many cases (although never mine) a girlfriend. I know that may not measure up to the responsibilities of many or most adults, but they can be significant. On the other hand, we don’t have the freedom, privileges, and benefits that come with being an adult either.

Obviously if you are married and have kids, you should care more about them than any sport. Not to sound too harsh about it, but that was a choice you made. You get some great benefits from that choice, but you have to trade some freedom for those benefits. Just don’t be angry with me about it. Speaking of choices, I choose not to party, I choose (I use “choose” loosely) not to have a girlfriend, and I choose to neglect other responsibilities; is it the smartest decision? Maybe not. Is it my decision? Yes, and I will be the one to deal with any consequences.

Unlike an adult, there are certain times when I do not have the power to choose. As my mom has made a point to remind me, teenagers in America I have to obey the demands of their legal guardians; which means when my mom says I can not train, then I do not have a choice. If I choose to ignore her, she has the option to, and certainly will, involve the police. And, for some reason, my mom never lets me train. I guess she knows that it is the one thing that I really care about. In her eyes, that makes it the most effective punishment, but I’m too hard headed for that to work.

For the past year I have not asked to go to one high school party, I barely have hung out with any of my high school friends, all I wanted to do was do Jiu Jitsu. Also for the past year my grades haven’t been the greatest, and even though training every night or not training at all does not have an effect on whether my grades are high or low; my mom seems to feel like she is handling the situation by limiting the days that I can train. Knowing that the sport has pretty much saved my life has no effect on her decision to let me train, so I train when I can which is only three days a week. Bleh, makes me sick thinking about it. So when you tell me how great i’ve got it and that your wife won’t let you train one night and I just laugh, it’s because you aren’t the one that’s legally bound not to train. Yeah, your wife might make you sleep on the couch, but my mom will call the cops and let me sleep in a cell (and i’m not exaggerating here).

Note: If you have a family to take care of, please do not take this post as an insult. I commend you for taking care of your business. If you still train seriously while having a family, I commend you for doing so also (and yes it is possible, I have a couple teammates that do it). My point is that everything isn’t so easy in the life of a teen, there are reasons that we can not train, and there are serious things we have to sacrifice to be able to train.

From the younger single guys, I hear the excuse, “I have a girlfriend and she won’t let me train”. Honestly, I don’t care, dump her, go buy a bottle of Jergens, and find a girl who will let you train. I’ve lived without a girlfiend for 17 years and expect to continue this trend. If your girlfriend really loves you, she will support you in what you really want to do.

Another thing many teens will understand but many of you “others” won’t. Transportation. As a 16 year old who didn’t have his licence and relied on his mom (who isn’t the most supportive in the first place) to give him rides, its hard to train as much as you would like to. When I realized that training meant so much to me that nothing would stop me, I decided to finally listen to my instructor Dave Trader and start riding my bike to the gym.

So I pitched the idea to my mom that I would ride my bike to the gym after school and that she could just pick me up at night so it would be easier on her. She said it was cool as long as I wore a helmet (I looked pretty bad ass with my huffy helmet, but I was safe). The gym was ten miles from my house so it was way too long to bike the whole way – especially at 260 lbs. So I would catch the bus about a half mile from my house and take the bike onto the bus, then get dropped off about 2 miles from the gym. Then came the hard part, the menacing ride down route 234 to get to the gym. I can recall busting open my toe while crashing my bike in the middle of the road as a trucker laughed and pointed at me to his passenger. I can also recall the back of my bike wheel being hit by some idiot trying to beat a red light. But…..if I could go back and do it all over again I would do the same thing – training every day took my game to new levels.

There are so many more excuses that I can totally debunk and in Part 2 I will do so to most of them.

I was so excited, thinking that in only a year that I would be in the UFC kicking butt. A few months down the road I started to realize otherwise. By this time things weren’t going so well for me; my grades were in the drain (as usual) so my mom would only let me train twice a week. I also hadn’t lost any weight since I started, I felt a little bit better but it didn’t show on the scale. Everyone kept telling me I was getting so much better than when I started, I still didn’t see it. After 4 months I still haven’t passed a guard and I still haven’t caught a submission. Guys were coming in for their free week trial and totally dominating me. Then one Thursday night it finally happened, I passed the guard, settled in side control, and got the americana. Even though the person I got it on had been training a month and was about 100 pounds lighter than me, it felt good. That night after bragging to Facebook and everyone else I could tell, I couldn’t even sleep. I couldn’t be more excited to train the next day. The next time I trained we had a guard rotation and I actually passed a guard! It seemed like things were looking up for me. After class I decided to ask Dave when I could start competing. He said I should start training for the spring copy nova because it was local and a good place for beginners. With my grades still in the toilet it was hard to train more than 2 days a week. So I started to actually put forth some effort in my classes, within two months my grades were good enough to do jiu jitsu whenever I wanted. The problem was I could only train 4 days a week because my mom would only give me a ride on those days. The gym was ten miles away so there was no way I could walk or ride my bike. At the time I was only 16 so I didn’t have a licence or a car. So I just dealt with that for the time being. It seemed like I was really enjoying jiu jitsu and things were starting to come together more and more. I knew I liked jiu jitsu, but little did I know how much I would give up for it.

The next time I trained at Dave Trader Jiu-Jitsu, the class was taught by one of the schools purple belts, Big Jay Corbitt. As you might have guessed by the name, Big Jay is a big guy and (whether it was his intention or not) the thing I learned in this class was mainly how to use my size to my advantage in Jiu-Jitsu.

For some reason, this turned out to be the day my mom decided to show up early to pick me up. Ever the salesman (and probably because he knew the goofy kid up front wouldnt ask) Big Jay asked my mom if she was ready to sign me up. I’ll give my mom credit. She quickly came up will all of the reasons why she shouldn’t, but she wasn’t prepared when Jay turned the tables on her and said that the instructors there would make sure my grades stayed high and that he could already tell that I would definitely stick with it.

I could see that what Jay said had comforted my mom, yet she still didn’t really say anything that led me to think that she would actually sign me up. On our way home, still with no intention of actually following through, but wanting to see if my mom would humor me; I asked if she would sign me up. She told me that it was way too much money, and that I would just quit in a few months in like I had done with so many other activities. I didn’t feel like arguing so I let it go, I was so tired from class that I didn’t have the energy to talk much.

My mom and I didn’t talk much about Jiu-Jitus until it was time for my next class. I remember she wasn’t terribly happy about giving me a ride to the gym, but I convinced her take me. The class went much of the same way this time around, the technique this time was the hand stand pass in butterfly guard (I remember this primarily because I am one of those people who are apparently incapable of doing a hand stand).

That night, after class, I had asked her once again, but got the same answer as before – it was too expensive and I would just quit. But this time I tried to reason with her explaining that I wouldn’t quit, and how it would help me lose weight. She still said it was too pricey, she wouldn’t pay for it unless my grades were high and she thought that I would stick with it. This type of conversation went on for the next two days, she never broke.

As luck would have it, the last day of my trial was also my birthday. I came to the gym that day with 100 dollars in birthday money in my wallet. After class I was talking to Dave about how my mom wouldn’t sign me up. He seemed sympathetic and he assured me that we would figure something out. I kinda figured he was just humoring me. Iwas sure he had heard this same story before. Every high school kid that comes through the gym door wants to be an MMA fighter, none of them have the money to pay for class, and very few can convince their parents to pay for it.

In a last ditch effort to get my mom to sign me up, I waited inside so she would have to come in and get me. When she came in, I immediately started to bombard her prices. She actually seemed to be ready to sign up until the sales guy told her about the 6 month commitment. She said she wouldn’t do it because I would never train consistently. I tried to assure her that I would, but she didn’t believe me at all. After a long awkward silence, Dave Trader, the head instructor, threw out an idea.

Dave suggested that in order to show that I was serious and would really stick with it, I should pay for the first month. Then if I paid for the first month and trained consistently for that month, my mom could sign me up for my first six months afterwards. My mom liked this idea and nodded her head in agreement. The problem was that I only had 100 dollars and the fee was $140. I told Dave about this but he said it was fine, if I was willing to put up the money myself he was willing take the chance with me. It was hard to hand over all of my birthday money, but it was worth it.

I can still remember the first time I attended a class at Dave Trader Jiu-Jitsu. When I walked into the gym , I was greeted by this goofy kid that worked the front desk. He started by telling me how great he was in both Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai. He even “taught” me how to throw a Muay Thai kick. After that day, I saw him in maybe 2 classes. Not surprisingly, he no longer works at the gym.

So anyway, the goofy guy sends me back to the area where they hold most of the classes. I thought I was pretty familiar with the gym – I had done some boxing there before the new owners took over and renamed it Rage Fight Club. I was astounded. There, right in the middle of the gym, was a huge cage! I walked over to the cage, took my shoes off, and walked in.

The first jiu-jitsu guy I talked to was this tall, skinny guy. He didn’t look like he had too much muscle on him; but one thing that struck me was the veins bulging out of his forearms. He asked me if I had trained before, of course I replied with the standard “Oh yeah….I train in my basement with some of my friends.” I went on to further make an ass of myself; I told him that I planned to be in the UFC by the time I was 18. I’m pretty sure I told anybody who would listen that, “since I used to box – my hands are good – all I need to do is work on some ground game for the next two years and I’m sure I’ll make it.”

Class finally started, but not until after I had successfully made a fool of myself to everyone attending it. We started with a basic warm-up – breakfalls, shrimps, army crawls, etc. I’m pretty sure I didn’t do a single exercise properly and still barely made it through the warm-up. Things didn’t get much better when we moved on to the technique portion of the class. That first day the class was working a butterfly guard pass. The one where you reach under and pinch both legs together, drive your shoulder into them, and then come around to side control. Looking back, my attempts at the technique were terrible. I would barely pinch my partners knees together, put almost zero weight on him, and then kinda just flop into side control. Still confident I was destined for UFC greatness, I was blissfully unaware of any of this.

Next came time for sparring. Dave, the blackbelt instructor, told me I didn’t have to spar, but if I wanted to I should watch a few rounds and could jump in when I felt ready. I wanted to tell Dave, “Future UFC champs don’t need to watch a few rounds,” but I humored him and waited a few minutes before jumping into line. Although I don’t remember much of the actual sparring, I know it was a guard rotation and I now realize the few times I managed to spend any significant time on the mat were when the upper belts took pity on me and let me work a little.

After class I talked to the goofy kid at the front desk about the prices. After he finished (and I finished secretly laughing), I told him that I would be back for my second free class.

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